Emerging Solutions

My husband threw out his back a few days back, and today I took him to my favorite body worker. His name is Joe. Joe is either a magician or a technician, or both. The artistry with which he eases & relieves underlying patterns in the body is amazing. All his amassed knowledge and skills truly enable him to execute what he does with such precision that it makes it look like wizardry to the untrained eye. He found the route causes to my husbands troubles, including ones that were laid years ago, helped them release, and supported his body to find a new healthy internal balance of structure, stability, movement & flexibility.

Two days previously I took my husband to a massage therapist. It was nice, and I am sure helpful in keeping things in his back from locking down (until we could get an appointment with Joe), but it is not the same as what he did today. I’m not knocking massage therapy here, but it is just different. Plain & simple. I think it is massively beneficial to help relieve stress, tension and generally receive touch to support a sense of well being. (And kudos to all the other well documented benefits of massage too.) But there is also a time & place to undo & redo the underlying patterns that culminate in the symptoms you’re currently experiencing. And I think that this time & place needs to be acknowledged more in the health & wellness community. There is certainly a time & place to just get a massage too, but I think people would benefit greatly to becoming accustomed to hearing about “root work” (as I will now call all forms of work that aim at re-solving the underlying patterns — physical, emotions, energetic, mental…) and being able to decipher when & where it is time for one and when it is time for the other.

(And surely root work isn’t unknown. Chiropractic & many other forms of healing work do this. It just needs to be in the health & wellness conversation more than it is.)

My curiosity goes to why — why is massage (and things roughly equivalent to it) so much more accepted in our culture than other forms of root work?  It is a million times more common to find a massage therapist than it is to, say, find someone like Joe. (Ok, so maybe not a million literally. But you know what I mean.) Why is this? Why is it that it is so much more common, accepted & mainstream for you to have work done that helps you do amorphous things like “feel good,” “relieve stress,” and “boost immunity”? Why is it so much less common for you to seek out support on going to the root of the problem and fix it where it begins?

Why are you feeling bad in the first place? Why do you allow such stress in your life? Why is your immunity compromised? And for that matter, why haven’t all your hoped & dreams become realities yet? There are always reasons we unconsciously keep ourselves from having what we want on the outside. Always.

I’m curious about this because I do root work. I don’t do body work, but I work in the realms of the emotions, memories, hopes-dreams-n-desires, and our identity & belief structure (who we take ourselves to be in the first place). I (very roughly) liken coaching to massage — both uber helpful in their own way, but not getting at the root of what is going on. Someone can help you get clear on your goals or make a plan of action for moving forward. (Or even ride your ass to get that action plan done!) But really, why is that particular dream harder to achieve than all the others? Why is your life is such good shape in all but a few areas? What’s going on there? Wouldn’t you rather undo & redo those underlying patterns so it is easier to do ( & be, & have, & enjoy…) all these things on into the future (and NOT have to hire someone to help you with an action plan each and every time!). I know I would.

I also know I am grateful to Joe for helping my husband re-solve the underlying support structure issues with his back so I won’t have to take him to a massage therapist every time he gets hurt. He will just get hurt less now!

As I spend this morning putting thoughts together to write my first post, I realize it has been almost 2 years since I first laid the seeds of having a blog. Between 11/09 and 06/11 my empty shell of a blog has waited for me. Even though there has been no movement externally obvious, having it here in the background has served me. It’s hollowness has silently beckoned the question “What will you write in me?” And the corollary, “What do you find important?”

I’ve known in the broadest strokes what I have found important — I had no trouble adding the catchline to the top of this blog “transforming….self, group & society.” That still sums up my interests well, and I am sure it will for years to come. But what are the specifics? Where do all of my broad interests intersect in that little way that is just me? And thus, in what ways can I uniquely contribute to the larger work of transformation?

One of my original guiding questions was “How does change happen?” or “What enables change?” ….be it on a personal level, interpersonal, group, organizational or systems level. I started in the world of personal change…”How do we be the people we truly are?” And I shifted for a while into the group/systems change side of things…”What enable large-scale systems change and what would enable whole societies to shift into more life-affirming patterns?” I went up & up the scale of thinking, and popped right back out at the bottom: people. Individuals. How could we ever have different groups, systems or societies if the people are still the same? Thus I have spend the last 3 years immersed in the world of personal change again.

Since this first entry feels both like a personal check-in with long not-seen friends, and also a space to start sharing ideas, I feel drawn to share some of my personal journey here too. I have recently completed my Master’s level certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming with NLP Marin, and their distinctive way of doing NLP. (They refer to it as Transformational NLP.) And last year I also completed my MA in Transformative Leadership at CIIS. At the time I started CIIS the concept of “leadership” was the best intersection I could find between the personal and the group levels of change. It still may be. I have not thought expressly about it in the last 18 mo. that I have been focused on NLP.

One more tidbit to add in before I begin to weave it all together….I recently read a lovely article on Reality Sandwich called ‘Homo Luminous: The New Human’ by Alberto Villoldo. In it Villoldo reminded me of the very original pull toward working with the individual level of reality in service of the whole. He says:

I see the main problem as a spiritual one. Not resource problems, but the problems centered around human beliefs, the troublesome elements founded in our mythology. Our problematic mythology is collapsing all around us. It is a mythology that is predatory, that is abusive, that reaps the cream of the earth – timber, water, topsoil – and passes the furtive costs onto future generations. These greedy, rapacious paradigms that pose humans as a dominator over nature are no longer sustainable.

I undertook a several year thought exercise in my early 20′s trying to decipher where to put my energy, passions & attention. My general thought was “Where would make the most impact?” (Since then I have realized that there are equally important questions to pair with that one, such as “Where does my heart call me?” and “What wants to happen through me?” and “Where does my love flow with the most ease?”) My ‘most impact’ questioning roughly went like this: “I see X thing that is not as my heart says is right. What allows that to be in place? And what allows that to be there? And what allows that to be there?” And so on. Sometimes it more so felt like I was going in circles of causality, and other times it felt like I was actually getting to the bottom of something.

There was one day when this process actually took me in a new turn. I had already been exposed to Wilber, mythology, archetypes, and personal growth of different sorts, so was already familiar with the importance of beliefs, but for whatever reason this was a pivitol moment. I think I was asking myself ‘What enables people to cut down forests with no regard?’ and the answer that came up was “Because they believe they can.” I was struck. It was so obvious, and I knew it already, but somehow the clarity stuck me in anew that day.

Because they believe they can. Beliefs. In one sense, it all came down to beliefs. We don’t do anything that we do not believe we can or do not believe we should do. So, my question became “How do we change beliefs?”

I have learned a lot since the addition of that question into my guidance system. Most notable and concretely it has led me to study NLP (among other methodologies), which in my opinion is one of the best, clearest, and straight forward systems for working with beliefs, both unconscious and conscious. So here I am, a Master level NLP Practitioner. I am enjoying my small and growing private practice working with people who desire change in their lives. Beautiful. Lovely. And, like I said earlier this week I was reminded of my original impetus for learning about this.

This impetus included the collective beliefs many of us share about life, generally referred to as mythology, archetypes or worldview. My original hope was to learn how to facilitate changes in those beliefs. And now I’m noticing how my training as a transformational practitioner interestingly intersects with that hope. All my training says that one only should engage in a change relationship with someone if it is consensual and they desire support for change. Working to change someone without that consent is manipulative. Yes, there might be some gray areas where people do not yet realize that they want a change, or realize that what they want is possible. But I think it is well said by Will Varey of emrgnc.com.au “If they don’t have they question they are not ready for the answer.”

Where does this leave me? Well, in one sense where I’ve always been: living the question while answers emerge. In another sense, it leaves me very well down the road of personal change & belief transformation. I have learned an in-depth system of working with people’s inner lives.  And additionally, at this moment I am just realizing that my desire to work with the intersection of personal change & collective change is only now beginning to fruit. I have a good sense of the personal half and the collective portion, but where and how the intersect and co-support each other’s change is yet to be revealed and fully understood by me. Yet, I still intuit with the same clarity that has helped propel me down this path that collective change cannot happen without personal change, and personal change cannot happen without collective change.

I welcome any thoughts, reflections & sharing as I begin to put my thoughts together and a form that can be shared with you all.

All my best,

Amy

Many thanks, and I look forward to sharing and collaborating with you all soon. -All my best.